As road traffic has continued to increase at rates greater than increases in road capacity, the effects of increasing traffic congestion have had growing deleterious effects on business and government operations and on personal well-being. Accordingly, efforts have been made to combat the increasing traffic congestion in various ways, such as by obtaining and providing information about current traffic conditions to individuals and organizations. One source for obtaining information about current traffic conditions in some larger metropolitan areas is networks of traffic sensors capable of measuring traffic flow for various roads in the area (e.g., via sensors embedded in the road pavement), and such current traffic condition information may be provided to interested parties in various ways (e.g., via frequent radio broadcasts, an Internet Web site that displays a map of a geographical area with color-coded information about current traffic congestion on some major roads in the geographical area, information sent to cellular telephones and other portable consumer devices, etc.).
However, while such current traffic information provides some benefits in particular situations, it is often difficult to display and otherwise provide information about traffic conditions to users in such a manner as to allow the user to effectively understand the traffic conditions.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide improved techniques for displaying and otherwise providing information about traffic conditions to users, as well as to provide additional related capabilities.